To box or not to box

This particular post will be dedicated to one of my favorite foods....mac and cheese. When my sister and I were young (but not too young), my mother had us cook one night a week (this didn't last for long just because of crazy schedules). We even started our own little cookbook in a red spiral notebook (we had little tabs cut out to represent the different sections a cookbook would normally have). One of our favorite meals to make was macaroni and cheese. This never involved a boxed sauce (certainly no Velveeta or powdered cheese to be found). We would create a rue, grate in white cheddar using one of those cylindrical hand crank graters, and mix away. Sometimes we'd bake it...sometimes we wouldn't.

But as an adult I moved away from sauces from scratch. Boxed pasta kits became a much easier option (especially the ones that just had squeezy cheese not requiring milk or butter...it's sort of hard to guarantee that as a college student you have those staples at your fingertips). Then as I got a little older, I started putting in canned tuna, Italian breadcrumbs, and cayenne pepper (I believe this idea might have come from an ex...but it's mine now, so there!). That combo became my ubiquitous tuna mac and cheese casserole. Occasionally, broccoli would be added. (I would like to point out with a bizarre mixture of disappointment and pride that I never once topped my casseroles with those little canned fried onions.)

Recently when my mother and sister were visiting, we watched a Food Network Mac and Cheese Challenge and an episode of the Next Food Network Star where two of the remaining four contestants were asked to cook mac and cheese. It was a full on craving attack. We had originally planned to eat something else (which escapes me at the moment), but after those two shows, it became obvious - we absolutely needed to make mac and cheese. Only problem - I didn't have any of the ingredients (except for flour) to make the sauce from scratch, so to the grocery store I went.

We used the whole wheat + protein (or something like that) fusilli from Barilla (I think), which was a slight attempt to increase the nutritional value of the meal. I made a roux, browned the flour just a bit, and started putting in the two cheeses that I had purchased - fontina and extra sharp white cheddar. The fontina was for it's melty qualities and the cheddar was for it's personality. A little nutmeg and black pepper were added to make the sauce pop a bit. I added a touch of freshly grated parmesan to add some salt. Once everything was boiled, drained, and mixed, I put it into a pyrex dish and topped it with a bit of the remaining cheddar and parmesan. We baked it for a while, but nothing got brown and bubbly (I think the brown would need to come from it being under the broiler, but I digress).

All in all, with a glass of a fairly nondescript red wine (just the kind my mom and I like), it turned out pretty well. Personally, it wasn't cheesy enough for me. I think I would have liked to either have a higher cheddar to fontina ratio, or maybe a different cheese altogether in the place of the fontina. Like I said, it melted really well, but it just didn't have enough punch. Mom and Sis said they thought it was good, and certainly it didn't keep me from eating the leftovers in quick order, but I'll need to adjust the recipe in the future.